Nestor Makhno

About the author

Nestor Makhno, The Anarchist Revolutionary

Nestor Ivanovich Makhno was born on October 27, 1888, in Gulyai-Polye, a small village in the Russian Empire that is now part of Ukraine. He became one of the leading figures in the anarchist movement, leading an independent anarchist army in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Civil War. His insurgency against both the Bolsheviks and the White Army is notable for practicing a form of free communism, based on the principles of local self-governance, direct democracy, and a staunch anti-Bolshevik stance.

Makhno wrote extensively about his political ideas and life experiences, his most notable work being 'The Struggle Against the State and Other Essays.' His writings and his role in leading the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine exemplify his contribution to the anarchist movement. Makhno's approach to anarchism, marked by an emphasis on the autonomy of local communities, direct democracy, and militancy, left a significant impact on the anarchist movement and is still studied and referenced in discussions on anarchism, revolutionary strategy, and alternative modes of societal organization. He died on July 6, 1934, in Paris, France, but his ideas and the legacy of his actions continue to influence anarchist thought till today.

Date of Birth: October 27, 1888

Date of Death: July 6, 1934

Country of Birth: Russian Empire

Political Ideas: Anarchism, Direct Democracy, Anti-Bolshevism

Quotes Available: 21

Quotes by Nestor Makhno

Anarchism's outward form is a free, non-governed society, which offers freedom, equality and solidarity for its members. Its foundations are to be found in man’s sense of mutual responsibility, which has remained unchanged in all places and times.

"Soviet" power is a power no better and no worse than any other.

Liberalism, socialism and state communism are three branches of the same family, resorting to different approaches in order to exercise their power over man.

According to their absurd programs, the statist socialists and communists have decided to "allow" man to emancipate himself socially, without its thereby being feasible for him to manifest that freedom in his social life.

It is through the inspiration of collective responsibility that the revolutionaries of all epochs and all schools have united their forces; it is upon this that they based their hope that their partial revolts - revolts which opened the path for the oppressed - were not in vain, that the exploited would understand their aspirations, would extract from them the applications suitable for the time and would use them to find new paths toward their emancipation.

The lunacy of the Soviet regime must be eliminated and replaced by the vital principles of the exploited workers, on a basis of solidarity, freedom and equal voice for each and every person.

The fact that the modern state is the organizational form of an authority founded upon arbitrariness and violence in the social life of toilers is independent of whether it may be "bourgeois" or "proletarian."

Collective responsibility in revolutionary action... is a fundamental principle, which guides each one of us in our way of understanding the anarchist idea, in our determination that it should penetrate to the masses, in its spirit of sacrifice.

Oppressed brother, banish all power from within you and do not allow any to be established either over you or over your brother, be he near or far!

There are even moments when the authority of the socialists and communists is worse than the bourgeois, for they tear down their own ideas and trample on them.

The really wholesome, joyous life of the individual or group is not built up with the aid of power and programs that seek to enclose it within artificial constructs and written laws.

Whether individually or as a countless mass, man finds himself at the mercy of this band of drones going under the name of "governors and masters," when in reality they are nothing but straightforward exploiters and oppressors.

The sworn enemy of your emancipation is the state: it is best embodied by the union of these five stereotypes: the property-owner, the soldier, the judge, the priest and the one who serves them all, the intellectual.

It has come to pass in history that the workers have defeated capitalism, but the victory then slipped from their grasp, because some state power emerged, amalgamating the interests of private capitalism and those of state capitalism for the sake of success over the toilers.

Anarchism is a part of human nature, communism its logical extension.

Anarchism is not merely a doctrine that treats of man's social life, in the narrow meaning with which the term is invested in political dictionaries, and sometimes, at meetings, by our propagandist speakers. It is also a teaching that embraces the whole existence of man as a rounded individual.

The power of the state will never deliver joy, happiness and fulfillment to any society. Such power was created by drones for the sole purpose of pillage and indulgence of their often murderous violence against those who do produce, through their toil - whether through determination, intelligence or brawn - everything useful and good in man's life.

Anarchism does not depend on theory or programs, which try to grasp man's life in its entirety. It is a teaching, which is based on real life, which outgrows all artificial limitations, which cannot be constricted by any system.

There is no such thing as harmless power.

Only the man who has successfully rid himself of the chains of oppression and seen all the horrors being perpetrated against the human race can be persuaded that his freedom and that of his neighbor are inviolable, as are their lives, and that his neighbor is his brother.

The enemy is very strong because, for centuries past, he has made his living from theft and violence: he has the accumulated experience of that, he has overcome internal crises and now he puts on a new face.

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